The majority of medicines and drugs require administration in a series of doses at specific times over a period of time for increased effectiveness. Outside of a hospital or clinic setting, this usually requires the patient or an individual caring for the patient to be responsible for keeping track of the medication in question. However, a frequent problem is that the patient or the individual caring for the patient errs in the administration of the medicine. Patients may forget to take a dose of their medication, be tardy in taking a dose, or forget entirely to take a dose and/or take a second dose too soon, etc.
In addition, with some drugs, such as controlled substances (e.g., oxycodone), there is a risk that patient may not follow the dosage instructions as a result of a drug addiction and/or there is even a risk that a patient may illegally sell and distribute some of the pills and then subsequently allege that the pills are misplaced, lost, or stolen, etc.
A number of approaches to solving the above problems have been proposed and embodied in different devices. In particular, there are a number of devices that include a pill case or box with a timer or alarm to alert the patient that a certain time period has passed and that the medication should be taken. Also, these simple alarms provide no means to ensure or check compliance with administration of the medication. Moreover, if the patient fails to take the medication at the prescribed time, the patient is likely to fail to reset the timer or alarm.
In addition, existing products are not particularly suited to handle different sized and different shaped pills but instead, typically require a new entire dispensing device for different categories of pills. This is costly and also overly complex.